


By These Ten Bones (MDZS Version)

by kanonkita



Category: By These Ten Bones - Clare B. Dunkle, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Horror, Crossover, Historical Fantasy, Horror, M/M, Post-apocalyptic AU, Romance, Slow Burn, Werewolf AU, but a lot of stuff is different, but... in ancient china, gaylation, it's almost like, one (1) canon character death, probably not what you're expecting from the term werewolf, sort of a, still ancient, still china, still magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24134182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanonkita/pseuds/kanonkita
Summary: "Wei Ying is in trouble," Lan Wangji realized. "What can I do?""Swear on your soul you won't give him over. Swear to stand by him if I tell.""I swear," said Lan Wangji. "May I lose heaven if I fail.""You'll lose more than that," muttered the old merchant. "You do just what I say, just like I say, or you'll be dead in two days. And if you tell the secret to anyone, your lad will be dead in that same hour."A stranger comes to Lan Wangji's village. A stranger with bone white skin and a coal-black flute and a shadow that wants to roam free. Naturally, Lan Wangji falls in love with him.
Relationships: Background Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén/Mèng Yáo | Jīn Guāngyáo, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Comments: 15
Kudos: 39





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello yes, this one is part-crossover, part-gaylation. "Gaylation" as in I have translated the book into "gay", if you will. I've made a lot more changes to this one than I did to my gaylation of Clare B. Dunkle's other book "The Hollow Kingdom" by virtue of the fact that the original version of By These Ten Bones is set in Scottland in, like, 1200 AD and this one I was aiming for something like Zhou Dynasty China. It has a BIT more realism than actual CQL, but I'm still playing it a little fast and loose with historical accuracy just because I am not an expert on ancient China, nor am I able to become one with just the few days of research I put into this fic, nor does CQL adhere to historical accuracy itself. So.
> 
> Anyway, if you enjoy this story, please consider checking out the original "By These Ten Bones". It is a highly underrated little dark fantasy romance novel.

“Best if you was dead.”

The two of them sat at a small fire far away from dwellings, and the night was cold. Trees creaked and rustled in the darkness, unseen and alarming. The man was older than his own parents, with tough skin and greasy gray hair. He wiped streaming eyes on his sleeve and threw a stick onto the fire with savage ferocity, sending up a shower of sparks. “Best if you was dead and with your folks,” he sobbed. “You’d beg me if you knew.”

The little boy stared into the flames, his face white and pinched. He didn’t know what he was doing there. He didn’t know who the man was. His life had become a terrifying riddle, and he was too young to make sense of it all.

“It’s the only kind thing,” insisted the man brokenly. “But I ain’t got the guts. You’d kill me. I don’t know how, but you’d do it. You’re a monster now, that’s what you be, and I got to keep you alive.”

The child huddled in a tunic that was much too big for him. Faint stains marked his arms and hands. They hadn’t cleaned it all off. Black lines under his fingernails. Blood looked black at night. He raised frightened gray eyes to the man.

“Nay, don’t look on me!” was the frenzied response. “I can’t bear it, I tell you! You’re cursed now, understand me? Don’t look on no one again. Don’t be getting fond of me because I keeps you, neither. You’re the kind that kills them they love.”

The wind rose, flattening the lonely little fire and whipping the invisible branches of the trees. Wet leaves stirred and flopped on the ground, too heavy to fly away. The boy wrapped his thin arms around himself and tried to understand. _How could I kill anyone?_ He wanted to ask. _I didn’t kill them. I saw what did._ But he wasn’t supposed to speak.

“Don’t tell me about ‘em. Not a word. I don’t want to know. I can’t change nothing. I can’t help ‘em now. Don’t cry for ‘em, neither, hear me? Don’t go whimpering after your dam.” The man collapsed, weeping noisily onto his soiled and bloody fists.

But the little boy didn’t cry for his mother. He didn’t shed a tear. He was in such pain of so many different kinds that he felt only bewildered surprise. In one hand, he held his grandfather’s carving tools in their beautiful leather holder and in the other his mother's flute, clutching the solid forms close against the torment that he felt. Only one thing was clear to him in the whirling chaos of his life. Yesterday they had belonged to his parents. Today they were his.


	2. 1

In the hills of Gusu, a manor stood by a narrow lake. It was not a fortress with high palisades and battlements, although its builders had known it had a natural defense: the steep hills to the west and north, and swampy ground to the east and south. The great wooden doors of the _damen_ , or main gate, were missing, leaving only a spirit screen to protect the overgrown outer courtyard beyond. The servants’ quarters sat empty, no guards waited outside the gate, and no prisoner sat in the dungeon cell, a simple hole carved into the western side of the outer courtyard.

The head of a cultivation clan had once lived here with his family and disciples, but he had been chased from the valley long years before. A strange man occupied this castle now, and the remaining kin of those who had once cultivated the spiritual energy of the land now cultivated only rice and hemp in the fields cut into the hills above the castle.

A boy just old enough to be thought a young man stood inside the _damen_ and wished that it still had a door to close. He was dressed in a hemp tunic, belted at the waist, which fell to his knees but left his legs bare down to his straw sandals. There was a pattern of white orchids stitched into the blue belt and blooming around the loose neckline of the lighter blue tunic. If his clothes were somewhat better made than those his neighbors wore, this showed only that the local weaver had his preference. Lan Wangji could be considered a strong favorite of his: he was the younger of the weaver’s only two children.

Not that Lan Wangji needed any special attentions in his clothing to be a striking figure in his village. His tall figure and thick black hair had started to draw the gaze of most of the girls in the village, though most were discouraged by the cold and disaffected expression in his narrow eyes. It was not that Lan Wangji didn’t experience emotions so much as that the expression of them did not come to him so naturally as it did others. There were few who could claim the privilege of having seen those fair features lifted with a smile, but perhaps this was lucky, for his was the sort of beauty that had the potential to turn such a small village upside down. 

But Lan Wangji certainly wasn’t smiling now. He was watching the land before him warily.

He had almost stepped out of the shelter of the courtyard when he saw the strangers. Four men he didn’t know were walking along the gravel shore of the lake, leading two pack ponies. The first two men were small and dark, dressed in much the same way as Lan Wangji himself, their tunics dyed a dark gray. The last two men were foreigners in tunics of dark animal hide, trousers, and silk boots. One of them was old, and the other was young.

Lan Wangji shrank back into the shadow of the _damen_. Strangers rarely came to their valley. Once or twice a year, merchants or artisans from the city came through, selling or trading their craft goods, and there was the occasional wandering monk. These men could be Travelers, or they might be wandering bandits, and their arrival today, the second day of Hungry Ghost Month when the gates of the afterlife stood open, concerned the boy. Four men were enough to do great harm in a settlement as small as his, especially if they were spurred on by resentful energy. There was no one left here who could wield a sword against them.

The newcomers paused on the path by the old manor, but they didn’t come toward it. To them, the place must have seemed entirely abandoned. The path to its gaping doorway was overgrown with weeds, and several dragon boats moldered on the shore nearby, their sides staved in so that they couldn’t be sailed. Instead, the men followed the path through boggy ground toward the low, humped houses of the settlement. Lan Wangji could see his relatives there pointing and calling to each other. A crowd began to gather. 

The strange men unstrapped their packs and started taking out their wares. So they were merchants after all. There would be new things to see, and no one would die this day.

The last stranger lingered on the stepping-stones through the bog, though, studying the neglected manor. Lan Wangji stared at his odd clothing and wondered where he came from. He was tall, though still shorter than Lan Wangji, and his face was lean and bare of any beard or mustache. So, probably close to Lan Wangji’s own age, then, and with the appeal of being completely unknown, perhaps bringing tales of far-off places. Curious and interested, Lan Wangji stepped into view, but as soon as the other boy saw him, he turned away.

Only slightly disappointed, Lan Wangji retraced his steps. He made his way carefully over the uneven stones of the outer courtyard and crossed the only slightly better maintained inner courtyard to enter the _zhengfang_ , or the main hall. The front door was pulled open, as were the windows, to let light, air, and now Lan Wangji into the room beyond. 

“Lianfang-zun,” he spoke in a soft voice, “merchants are here.”

In the far corner of the dusty hall, a small, pleasant-looking man in his mid-thirties carefully set his brush aside and looked up from his work. Jin Guangyao, or Lianfang-zun as he was known to the villagers by his more formal title, inhabited one small part of the place just as a hen might nest in a tumbledown barn. Throughout all four corners of the manor were cobwebs, emptiness, and whispering echoes, but here in one corner of this great hall were a gentry’s bed and furniture.

Leaving Jin Guangyao to consider these unexpected tidings, Lan Wangji exited the manor once more, twisting his long hair into a loose knot to keep it from whipping around his face in the wind as he picked his way across the stepping stones of the bog with practiced grace.

On either side of the boy rose two lines of high hills—great, green undulating walls that defined the narrow valley. Just now their steep slopes were swathed in misty tatters of clouds. Trapped between those hills, like a long silver knife blade, lay the quiet waters of the lake, with the manor on its gravel shore and the flat, waterlogged bog land at its head.

The settlement lay beyond this bog on slightly higher ground, its fields climbing the knees of the nearest hills in neat terraces. A deep, cold stream cascaded down through the terraces and ran along the village’s edge before vanishing into the bog and filtering into the loch. A dozen houses, some of which had large courtyards that boasted several pigs and some of which had no courtyard at all, were arranged in a neat pattern around a central square. Dogs and chickens wandered around the walls of the houses, seeking their daily scraps, and a few shaggy water buffalo grazed nearby.

Just now, the little community was in a state of high excitement. The townspeople thronged the square to see what the merchants had brought. In front of the men three-legged pots, known as _ding_ , and harness ropes lay on the ground, along with fine silver knives and other utensils. The old foreigner in trousers stood over a display of items carved from wood and horn: two-handled cups, combs, hair ornaments, and small chests and boxes, their surfaces carved with complex patterns and elaborate scenes. Some diminutive _arhats_ sat on the grass beside them, their wooden faces serene.

Lan Wangji spotted the beardless stranger again. He had unslung his own pack and laid it by his feet, but he was carving rather than selling. He sat on a boulder a little distance away from the crowd, ignoring it completely. He was fashioning something with a thin, curved knife, shaving off a bit here and there.

The carver may have been grown to a man’s height, but now he was closer, Lan Wangji doubted the other boy could be much above his own age. There was a fragile quality to his hands as they turned the wood. They were bone-white, the fingers long and slender. There was a fragile quality, too, to the hunch of his lanky shoulders. Thick black hair fell into his face as he bent over his work. Lan Wangji watched him for a long minute, but he never looked up.

A quiet belch at his elbow recalled the boy to his surroundings, and he glanced back to find the old man watching him indifferently. His wrinkled face was none too clean, and his cloth cap was unspeakable, but it was perhaps better than the long, grimy hair that it hid. “If you don’t see what you want,” he proffered with a thick accent, “tell me, and the boy can make it.”

In the time it took the stranger to ask this, Jin Guangyao had made his way to Lan Wangji’s side. The man had obviously taken a few moments longer at the manor to augment his attire. A fine brocade robe covered his plain silk under-robe now, and his hair was covered by a black horse-hair cap secured by a tie under his chin. Elegant even beyond what their own clan head had once been and dressed in a style that the local people hadn’t been allowed in a generation, Lianfang-zun commanded immediate attention from the strangers.

“And what would his excellency like to see?” inquired the old man, leaning forward, his clouded brown eyes suddenly greedy.

“This carving work,” Jin Guangyao observed with a dimpled smile. “It seems quite unusual.”

“It is, it is,” agreed the foreigner, stooping and retrieving a little box with alacrity. “He does handsome work, the boy does, whatever your heart can wish. This here,” and he ran his greasy finger over the elegant mountain scene engraved on the box top, “this is the finest style. Painted screens ain’t the taste anymore, carved paneling is the thing. Last year we worked for the twelfth prince himself, carving panels to his bedchambers. He begged us not to leave, says he can’t find any to match the work.”

The regal man considered this unlikely tale, his round dark eyes, like Lan Wangji’s, on the young man in question. The carver didn’t look up to acknowledge their interest. He kept right on carving his piece as if he were the block of wood.

“But what am I to do,” sighed Jin Guangyao, “a lonely bachelor in my rustic hermit’s cell? I have no place for paneled walls in my bedchamber.”

“You have a chest that he can carve for you?” suggested the seller. “Or a box that he could work?” Jin Guangyao nodded at this offer, his eyes bright and smile wide, and the pair of them walked away from the crowd to make a bargain.

Lan Wangji stood where they had left him, ashamed at a stab of jealousy he felt. Once his own family, like most of the others in their village, had been a pillar of the cultivation world, and the ancestral Lan home still lay somewhere high in the hills above, in even worse repair than the old manor on the lake shore. A weaver’s family was far from rich, even if they were an important part of the community, and Lan Wangji couldn’t even dream of having his own chests or boxes embellished so. What relics they had left from their old life were few and precious, like the ornate silver _guan_ that had decorated his father’s hair and now ornamented his older brother’s on special occasions, and the swords that lay wrapped in silk and never unsheathed on the shelves above their beds. Although they lacked the spiritual constitution to wield them, most families in the village still kept their ancestral swords close by, believing they could ward off evil simply with their presence. 

He was distracted from his musings, though, at the sight of something strange.

Sensing the pair’s departure, or perhaps seeing their shadows move by him on the grass, the silent carver glanced up quickly to study Jin Guangyao. His lean face was the color of the carved bone scattered amongst his woodwork, and his eyes were the clearest, softest gray. There was a caution in those eyes—intelligence, too—and he stared after the nobleman hungrily, as if he were learning him by heart. One long, penetrating glance, and then he was working at his wood-carving again as if he had never stopped.

The display of carved wares was unattended, and the curious Lan Wangji stepped close. He picked a two-handled drinking cup, made of dark wood and adorned with a pattern of dancing rabbits around the rim, and held it out to the other young man to indicate his interest. The peculiar stranger didn’t look at him.

“This one?” Lan Wangji spoke, thinking perhaps he hadn’t caught the boy’s attention, but still there was no response.

Lan Wangji walked closer and stopped in front of the carver, peering down at his current work. “A _guan_?” he questioned, recognizing the basic shape, but the young man didn’t slow his work, the small pale, pale curls of wood falling onto his knees. All Lan Wangji could see of him was his black hair. 

The taller boy blinked, uncertain how to proceed. It was rare that he met someone even less willing to converse than himself.

“He don’t ever speak, lad,” warned a matter-of-fact voice, and Lan Wangji turned to find the disheveled old man by his side again.

He nodded in understanding and started to step away, but felt something brush his sleeve. He looked down to see the carved hairpiece extended toward him in one long-fingered hand. Lan Wangji took it carefully and turned it over, examining the pattern he hadn’t been able to pick out while the other was working it. A lotus crown bloomed bright at the top of the hairpiece while the flower's roots curled down so that they would adorn the top of the wearer’s head in an elegant pattern of twists. Though made of unfinished wood rather than metal and hastily worked, it was at least as intricate and detailed a design as his brother’s ceremonial one.

“You want that piece, lad?” asked the old man. He took it in his own hand and studied it dubiously. “Half a sack of rice for it, or an equivalent of other goods.”

Lan Wangji shook his head tersely. He had no rice or goods to trade, and a weaver’s son couldn’t come home with something so vain as a _guan_ in the first place, especially when he already had one of his own. But what a beautiful, wonderful thing it was, to be sure.

“Ah, now,” the old man grunted, “tell me this. Who brews a strong drink here?”

“Nie Huaisang makes the Emperor’s Smile,” Lan Wangji told him.

“That’s fine. Here’s a bit o’ coin. Just take this empty flask to him and have him fill it for me, and you can have the _guan_.”

Lan Wangji looked down at the carved flower in his hand again before nodding agreement.

“Not much one for words yourself, are ye, lad?” the old man chuckled as he handed over the bit of iron currency and the flask. The boy gave no answer before turning away.

Lan Wangji started off with a will, but curiosity overcame him. He carefully turned and looked back. The carver was staring at him. He caught a swift impression of that extraordinary white face and those piercing gray eyes before the other boy dropped his head to stare at his now-empty hands. What was it like, Lan Wangji wondered, to live without words through affliction rather than choice? It wasn’t a question the other boy would ever be able to answer for him, of course. A bit of a tragedy, really. Lan Wangji walked off to find Nie Huaisang.


	3. 2

After bringing the filled flask back to the old man, Lan Wangji picked his way across the muddy ground of the township with his reward. All of the homes in the community faced south and were constructed of mud bricks over a wooden frame, but here the similarities among them ended. Some were single, three-bay constructions with the family’s private gardens and livestock pens spread around them, while others stretched longer to five or seven bays. A few were collections of multiple buildings arranged around a central courtyard in a far more humble version of the manor. 

The Lan family lived in one of the latter.

As Lan Wangji reached his home, several of his younger cousins were outside the front gate, picking through the ashes in search of anything that the flames hadn’t completely consumed of the paper money that the villagers had burned the previous day. The money was to appease the vengeful spirits that would be roaming the world of the living this month. Since they could no longer use their swords, such offerings were often the best protection that the former cultivation clans could give themselves against creatures not of their world. 

The boys called an enthusiastic greeting to their cousin when they spotted him, and one ran up to clutch at Lan Wangji’s tunic with sooty little fingers.

“Tang Er-ge!” their young voices chimed. “What did you get?”

Lan Wangji opened his hand to show them the wooden lotus  _ guan _ , and the boys all made noises of wonder at something so unusual.

“But you already have a  _ guan _ ,” one of them complained, pointing to the leaping rabbit, carved of horn, that he’d used to fasten the top portion of his hair since his fifteenth birthday the previous year. 

“This is different,” Lan Wangji said simply, holding it beyond the reach of their ash-smeared hands. Eventually, they groaned their disappointment at such a short explanation and ran off to see if any of their other relatives had acquired anything more interesting.

Unlike the decrepit manor beyond the village, the Lan residence did still have a door on its  _ damen _ , though it was made of bamboo poles lashed together with hemp cord rather than the heavy wood and iron that had once protected the manor. Within the walls lay the outer courtyard, little more than a stretch of grass and weeds with several chickens pecking around for bugs, and then the main hall, only just large enough for the entire family to gather and worship at the ancestral shrine housed there. 

This was also where they kept the other relics left over from their cultivation days: two elegant  _ guqin _ and an ivory  _ xiao _ . In the winters when there was no fieldwork to be done, the children of the Lan family would practice the music of their ancestors while seated together on the  _ kang _ , the raised platform on one side of the room, beneath which a stove could be lit to provide warmth. Lan Wangji’s aunt, Nie Meifeng, was seated there now, mending holes in her family’s tunics, either too busy or too engrossed with the work to acknowledge her nephew as he paused and offered a respectful bow to the shrine on his way through the shady hall. She was due to birth a child soon, her eighth, and wouldn’t be expected to work in the hot sun or the stuffy kitchen from now until the child’s one-month celebration.

The inner courtyard was a simple affair with a dirt path crossing south to north from the hall to the house where Lan Wangji, his parents, and his brother slept, and another crossing from east to west between his uncle’s family’s house and the kitchen. Surrounding the paths in each of the four corners were the gardens where his mother and aunt grew herbs and vegetables for the family. Livestock were not allowed in here in order to protect the gardens and keep the area clean, though several of the family cats were sunning themselves on the paths.

Until his coming of age, Lan Wangji had slept in the central room of the main house with his parents, but now they’d cleared the western side room for him. His older brother had the eastern room. Even though Lan Xichen was in the unusual position of having been promoted to the head of the family while both his father and uncle were still alive, he had considered it one step too far to oust his parents from their big box bed in the central room, especially when he himself had no wife or children to share it with yet.

Lan Wangji’s room was neat and tidy, smelling pleasantly of the various herbs that hung drying from the rafters. His own bed sat on another  _ kang _ , which took up nearly one half of the room. This was an extension of the  _ kang _ beneath his parents’ bed, which in turn extended into Lan Xichen’s room on the other side of the house. A bamboo shelf on the other side of the space held some remnants of the items they’d used the room to store before Lan Wangji had moved into it: spare dishes, pots, winter clothes, and spare blankets sat in careful stacks until someone in the family needed them. 

There was also a shelf slung from the rafters above the bed, upon which Lan Wangji kept what few personal possessions he had, such as his sword, Bichen, which had once been wielded by his father’s great-uncle, and the box in which he kept his personal supply of oils, herbs, and a comb for grooming. It was in this box that he placed the wooden  _ guan _ , wrapping it carefully in the piece of silk that had long protected the one he wore now.

The window at the front of Lan Wangji’s room looked out on the courtyard, and through the one on the northern side he could see his father at work in the back room. This was a long, low shed housing the loom and other tools that Lan Qingheng and his brother, Lan Qiren, used to weave clothing and blankets for their community. Lan Wangji could hear his father humming softly to himself as he threw the shuttle back and forth across the web of the loom. His uncle and mother were in the storeroom on the end of the kitchen, arguing about which items they could afford to trade for a new  _ ding  _ from the visiting traders. 

Jiang Liqin was a tall woman and generally considered the source of her sons’ striking good looks. She had never been fond of convention, keeping quiet, or her brother-in-law, and their arguments were a background noise as familiar as that of the old sow whuffling softly to herself in her pen behind the house or the babble of the stream as it ran past their walls. Lan Wangji’s face lifted in the faintest of smiles at the sound as he went to find his brother.

Lan Xichen was in his own room, counting out the small amount of money he kept on his own shelf. He looked up when his brother entered and smiled. While Lan Wangji’s smiles were precious for their scarcity, Lan Xichen’s were equally precious for their warmth and the readiness with which he bestowed them on others.

“How much do you think that carver would charge for a new Buddha for the village, A-Zhan?” he asked his younger brother now, sliding the bits of metal around in his palm. “That one I brought back from Lanling can’t match his skill by half.”

Lan Wangji made no verbal reply, and it was obvious that Lan Xichen expected none. Though twice his age, Lan Xichen was inordinately fond of his younger brother and more capable than even their parents at deciphering the slight gestures and expressions with which Lan Wangji made his thoughts known. As much as Lan Wangji would have liked to extend the same courtesy, though, he found that there were often aspects of his brother that he couldn’t wrap his head around. 

“Yes, it’s important,” Lan Xichen said in answer to his questioning blink. “A better effigy means we show more honor and will receive more blessings. I couldn’t afford one in Lanling, but a wandering craftsman is more likely to strike a bargain. Maybe if the other families contributed a little we could afford it...”

He lapsed into thought until Lan Wangji stepped back toward the doorway, looking out toward the kitchen where he could still hear his mother’s and uncle’s aggravated voices rising.

“I suppose I should,” Lan Xichen sighed, slipping the money back into its little leather pouch, and he walked past his brother to go help their family members find a peaceful solution to whatever they were disagreeing on.

Lan Wangji watched him go without envy. He had been barely old enough at the time to remember when his brother had returned, his head still shaved, from studying at the temple in Lanling, and announced that he had chosen not to pursue the monastic life after all. What had caused this change of heart, Lan Xichen had never said, but it had presented something of a problem. Although not ordained, Lan Xichen was still the expert on matters of faith in their village and the only person aside from Jin Guangyao who could read more than basic characters. He needed the authority to use this knowledge to guide his family and neighbors. So, his father and uncle had both decided to renounce their rights and make way for Lan Xichen to become head of the family at the tender age of twenty-one, a position whose responsibility he had borne admirably ever since in the eyes of the other villagers. But sometimes there was a weary sadness to his older brother that Lan Wangji couldn’t touch.

Unlike his brother, Lan Wangji had spent almost every day of his life near this house, within sight of this tiny settlement, absorbed in the activities and accomplishments of his relations who farmed there. Every rise of ground and every rock was as familiar to him as the faces of all the people he knew so well. For the most part, the boy was content that this should be so. He had always supposed that eventually he would raise his own family within the beautiful green walls of the enfolding hills. He and his brother would return the care that their parents had given them, place grandchildren in their laps, and close their eyes in their final sleep. Then his parents’ souls would find their way to new lives, and he and Xichen would add their memorial tablets to the ancestral shrine in the hall. Their children would someday grow up to do the same for them, and the cycle of life would continue.

Except that Lan Xichen was past thirty now and had no wife to help their mother around the house and bear him children, and this part of the picture had always given Lan Wangji pause as well. He had once assumed his brother’s lack of a wife was largely because he had left to Lanling around the age most of his peers were marrying and had then returned to find all of the girls taken, but as he grew older, Lan Wangji wondered if it might not be more related to the same sort of reluctance he himself felt whenever he surveyed his marriage prospects. It wasn’t that there were no young women in the village who were objectively beautiful or who had characters that appealed to Lan Wangji, but simply that, when he considered the prospect of marriage to such a woman and all that would entail, he found himself growing increasingly agitated and distressed. It was a matter he had long desired to discuss with his brother, but didn’t know how to begin with.

The problem would keep for a while still, though. While young men were technically old enough to marry after their naming and hair-binding ceremony, most waited several years—unless there arose the need to take responsibility for reckless actions with young women. Since Lan Wangji had no interest in such actions, the problem of a wife would keep for a while, and perhaps the women of the village would appeal to him more by then.

* * *

That evening, Chifeng-zun feasted the merchants at his hall, the largest in the village, so that they could tell their news and share their tales. Normally, the whole village would be present for such an event, lining the main hall on benches or stools and spilling out into the cool night, but during Ghost Month, it was not auspicious for children or the elderly to be about after dark. It was only a few key members of the community who attended this time.

Lan Wangji was allowed so that he and his brother could perform a song together, he on the  _ guqin _ and Lan Xichen on the  _ xiao _ , and he looked in vain for the carver. The boy wasn’t sitting with the other strangers, and no one else seemed to have missed him. What would he be doing all by himself in the long summer twilight? Even outside of Ghost Month, twilight was a dangerous time. Although the village was protected by the Buddhist icons and talismans that the Jin Clan had given them, restless spirits and unholy monsters still roamed the hills and plains outside of it. Lan Wangji found himself worrying about the other boy as he listened to the tales.

“This is a story from my clan's ancestral home in Yunmeng during the days of the Great Resentment,” recounted Jiang Fengmian, the village smith and Lan Wangji’s maternal uncle. “At one time, a Water Ghost appeared in the lake by Lotus Pier that was unusually vicious. Most lakes and rivers of a certain size have a Water Ghost or two in them, but they usually stay deep beneath the surface, waiting for the soul of the next person who drowns to replace them. This Ghost, however, became powerful enough that it began to walk among the houses of Yunmeng, taking children from their beds in the middle of the night.

“The clan leader of the time was troubled by this state of affairs and sent his second son to deal with the ghost. The son wielded his sword bravely against the Water Ghost, but all of his attacks seemed only to enrage the monster. Before long, he was defeated and only just managed to return home to his family.

“The first son, seeing his younger brother's grave wounds, declared that he would seek vengeance on the Water Ghost and went out the next night with his sword to combat it. His cultivation was great, but he was still unable to defeat the monster, and he too was only barely able to return home with his life.

“Now, this clan leader had a daughter as well, Jiang Meihui, who was not well-gifted in cultivation, but was quick-witted and creative. She saw her brothers' failures and asked her father that he grant her a chance to try combating the Water Ghost. The clan leader was reluctant to risk his beloved daughter, but eventually agreed.

“Jiang Meihui did not take a sword with her to meet the Water Ghost. Instead, she constructed a parasol from the branches of her favorite peach tree and painted its covering green. When the Water Ghost left the lake and found her on the shore, it could not harm her while she held such a powerful symbol of the Buddha’s protection.

“‘Why do you attack our village?’ Jiang Meihui demanded. ‘Do you not know that a Water Ghost is meant to wait at the bottom of the lake for its replacement?’

“‘I grew weary of waiting,’ the Water Ghost replied. ‘And as your family drew more spirit energy from the land to cultivate with their swords, there was so much negative energy left behind for me to draw on for my power.’

“‘If you were weary of waiting, then you should have passed on after you took the first soul,’ Jiang Meihui told the monster. ‘You have gone against your purpose and have lost the chance for release.’

“And with that, she formed a  _ mudra _ and called upon the Buddha as she struck the Water Ghost with her parasol. From that day forth, the Water Ghost was sealed at the bottom of the lake, unable to harm anyone else and unable to find a replacement and move on to the next life.

“Jiang Meihui returned and told this story to her father and brothers, and thus the Jiang clan discovered that it was their own efforts in cultivating the sword path that had brought this and the other monsters of the Great Resentment on their village.”

The listeners nodded with satisfaction at this familiar story. The Water Ghost of Lotus Pier was one of the major events that had led to the Jin Clan outlawing all forms of cultivation a century ago. It had also led to great respect for the women of the Jiang clan, whom some said possessed unusual powers beyond cultivation. This was why the Jin clan had married their current heir to Jiang Fengmian’s own daughter. 

There were rumors that their clan leader, Jin Guangshan, had wanted to marry Lan Wangji’s own mother back in the day, but she had spurned him and eloped with Lan Qingheng instead. Lan Wangji didn’t know how much truth there was to the rumors, but it was true that his parents had eloped; Lan Qiren complained about it whenever he found the chance.

The stories continued largely on the theme of Water Ghosts from here, and Lan Wangji thought again about the carver. He was a stranger to their country, and probably didn’t have cultivating ancestors to pass down such stories. Did he know about Water Ghosts and that even their lake held dangers at night, especially during Ghost Month when the gates of the underworld stood open? 

Something about those intense eyes made him keep thinking of the other boy. Perhaps he couldn’t speak, but with such eyes, he hardly needed to.

* * *

As Lan Wangji brought breakfast to Jin Guangyao in the manor the next morning, he saw the merchants packing their ponies. By the time he came back, two of them were gone, but the carver and his grimy companion had stayed behind. The young man sat on a stone taking apart Jin Guangyao’s box, and the old man was on his feet arguing with Lan Xichen.

Crossing the boggy ground on the stepping stones, Lan Wangji could hear the old merchant’s raised voice. “Thirty talents, and not a coin less,” he said in his funny accent. “Don’t be saying you can’t afford it, neither. I know about you cultivators.”

Lan Xichen shook his head apologetically. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but we hardly have sacks of gold stashed away under our mattresses around here. Our old statue isn’t anything to match his talent, and the whole village would be grateful. It would be a good deed, something to help him in his next life.”

“Next life?” scoffed the merchant. “That don’t mean a thing to him. He don’t got a next life.”

Lan Wangji could see his brother framing a philosophical response to this, but before he’d finished, he caught sight of the approaching boy. “A-Zhan,” he said. “How was Lianfang-zun this morning?”

Lan Wangji waited until he’d drawn level to answer. “Unchanged.”

Lan Xichen laughs slightly, as if chiding himself for expecting a more detailed response. “You needn’t trouble yourself about his meal this evening—I’ll bring it up. I owe him a game of xiangqi.” Then he turned back to the merchant. “I am Lan Xichen,” he told him, bringing his hands together in front of himself for a bow.

“Wang,” rejoined the old man with a clumsy bow of his own. “Thirty talents for the statue,” he repeated, to show that the gesture of respect wouldn’t help.

“And him?” asked Lan Wangji, indicating the boy busy with his carving work.

“He don’t got a name,” answered Wang with a shrug. “What does he need with one?”

_ So I could call it _ , Lan Wangji didn’t say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look.
> 
> No one ever said that the Twin Jades' mother WASN'T Jiang Fengmian's older sister.
> 
> Lol there are a few characters in this story who are more closely related to each other than they were in canon because we are in a small village here, and that's the way it goes.


	4. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note that I did a lot of research into how Zhongyuan would have been celebrated around this time period and... a lot of it conflicted. So, if you are a person who celebrates Zhongyuan and something in here doesn't ring true, it could be because it's not something that's done anymore, or it could be because the internet isn't always reliable. *shrugs*
> 
> Anyway, enjoy.

On the morning of Zhongyuan—the Hungry Ghost Festival—Lan Wangji happened to slow his walk from the old manor, where he had delivered Jin Guangyao’s breakfast, to enjoy the unusually lovely morning. The sky was a deep, clear blue, and the lake was sparkling. The sun had climbed over the rim of the hills to the east, filling the valley with shades of green and gold. For the last several days, the low clouds had covered the tops of the high hills, but now their pillared walls were fully visible on either side of the valley. All of the little waterfalls that cascaded down their sides to join the lake were sparkling with gold, and there were rainbows arcing over several of them. Lan Wangji lingered on the path for a bit, admiring the view. 

Tonight would be a full moon, and today was the day of Ghost Month when the barrier between this realm and that of spirits and monsters was at its thinnest. One could meet anything on Zhongyuan, they said, even during the daylight hours. There would be festivities after dark: lanterns and offerings to honor ancestors and appease the restless dead alike, but also feasting and laughter to enjoy for the living. Most of the women of the town were already at work in their kitchens to prepare the elaborate dishes they’d share with their families that evening, and anyone who wasn’t needed in the fields was cleaning ancestral shrines or otherwise preparing for the evening. A note of anticipation hung in the clear morning air that pulled at Lan Wangji more than usual, and he was feeling an uncharacteristic reluctance to go join the rest of his male relatives who were already hard at work on the harvest. 

He’d had a melody in his head for a few days now, and he wanted someone to help him get it down on paper before he lost it. It started soft and plaintive, but he thought it might swell into something stronger as it went. He would know better if he could sit down to pick it out on the  _ guqin  _ and perhaps have his brother play it back to him on his  _ xiao _ . It sounded a far better way to pass the time that day than trudging through the rice paddies with a sickle in hand. 

Just then, almost as if summoned by his thoughts, the sound of a flute rang clear and haunting over the peaceful morning valley. Lan Wangji turned in search of the source, half-expecting to find his brother, and found himself blinking, a bit dumbfounded, at what he saw instead.

Near the path from the manor were several great gray boulders, sunk waist-deep in the mud and moss. The carver was sitting on one of these, his tools spread out around him and the almost-finished top panel of Jin Guangyao’s box across his knees. But he wasn’t doing his work. He had a long, black flute raised to his lips and was playing a melody that sounded as if it had been pulled from the hills themselves.

Lan Wangji walked quietly up behind the other boy and stood beside the boulder, watching him as he played. The carver’s eyes were closed, as if to feel the melody more keenly as it rose out of him, but Lan Wangji had never seen him look so alive before. 

“Exquisite,” Lan Wangji spoke, surprising both himself and the carver boy, who nearly dropped his flute. “Apologies,” Lan Wangji quickly amended, but the boy was already stuffing his flute back into the sack at his side and taking up his carving tools again, going back to his work as if nothing had happened and Lan Wangji wasn’t there at all.

Lan Wangji glanced down at the carving now and found the hills and lake reflected there in a gently stylized scene of trees and water and clouds. The carver boy was currently using a thin chisel to pick out details on the rounded top of the tallest hill.

“That’s Cloud Recesses,” Lan Wangji told him, just as if he’d asked. “My family’s ancestral home.”

The mysterious young man’s hand stopped carving, and he glanced up at the hills.

“It’s shrouded in white at all times but portions of this season,” Lan Wangji continued, and he found the words coming to him more readily than usual as he went on. “Just as the clouds gather here to release their burdens, so did the remnants of the great cultivation clans during the Age of Resentment. Yunmeng Jiang, Qinghe Nie, and Qishan Wen all came to Gusu Lan seeking the protection of our sacred springs. Do you know about the Resentment?”

The carver boy gave him a sidelong glance and then shook his head slightly. Lan Wangji felt a small thrill—so the boy did understand his words, even if he couldn’t answer.

“A great darkness covered the land for nearly half a century, causing a plague of monsters and restless dead, until the great clan leaders came together to suppress it,” Lan Wangji explained. “The darkness lifted, but the clan leaders’ lives were lost in the process and the abominations that the darkness had created continued to appear wherever cultivation was practiced. The Lanling Jin clan, the head of the gentry clans at the time, declared therefore that cultivation would be outlawed. The abominations ceased, and the remnants of the other clans, stripped of their purpose, gathered here.”

Although his eyes were still fixed on the hills in front of them, Lan Wangji saw distinct interest in the other boy’s face, and so he continued.

“The clans moved down here into the valley because we were no longer gentry and had to tend the fields ourselves. The Qishan Wen were the best at organizing the clans into our new lives, and so became our chiefs. They lived in the manor there.”

The young carver turned on his boulder to look back at the mostly abandoned manor, its once-elegant form sprawling across the shore of the lake, its front gate gaping and empty, and its paths covered over in grass. Long black smears of mildew stained the wooden walls, a bleak sight on that lovely day.

“When my brother was still an infant, the last Wen chief, Wen Ruohan, determined that he would reclaim the right to cultivate,” Lan Wangji said. He was finding that it wasn’t so bad telling stories when his audience was so receptive and didn’t ask any more of him than what he already gave. “So he took his clan to fight against the Lanling Jin. But he had never been taught to cultivate and had no golden core, so he turned to unclean methods of cultivation to do so. This brought shame upon the rest of the clans, and we joined the Jin Clan in bringing him down. He waged battle countless times over many years to no avail, and was suppressed at last during my own first year.

“Jin-zongzhu scattered Wen Ruohan’s ashes over the land and had the last few Wen survivors killed. The manor was then empty for several years before Jin-zongzhu sent Lianfang-zun back here.”

The other boy gave him a questioning look and Lan Wangji realized that more explanation was necessary there, though what to say when so much of it was salacious and unsubstantiated gossip, he wasn’t sure.

“Jin Guangyao is Jin Guangshan-zongzhu’s eldest son, but by a mistress who lived in our community,” he settled on saying. “His mother was a distant cousin to mine, but had no one willing to call her family. He grew up here as Meng Yao until Jin-zongzhu eventually acknowledged him as his son when he was sixteen. But his father sent him away from Lanling again a few years later when his legitimate son, Jin Zixuan, came of age.”

The other boy nodded thoughtfully and rubbed a finger over the side of his nose as he considered the manor. Lan Wangji imagined that he was smart enough to guess some of the unspoken details from the fact that Jin Guangyao had been named into his father’s generation rather than his brother’s, the detachment of his mother from her own family, and the fact that the man now lived alone in a derelict manor without so much as a single vassal to accompany him. 

On a whim, Lan Wangji reached into the pouch on his belt to withdraw one of the round discs of bread that his mother had sent with him for the day and offered it out to the other boy. Immediately the spell was broken, or maybe the spell resumed. The carver went back to work, his face hidden behind his hair. 

Lan Wangji stood there for a little while, watching the wood shavings lift before the chisel blade. After a few moments, he walked away, leaving the bread and his kerchief on the boulder beside the other boy and hoping perhaps they might see each other in town for the Zhongyuan celebrations that evening.

* * *

Sometime later, Chifeng-zun walked by the boulder, and he, too, studied the carving, but he was not as impressed with the delicate work as the poetic Lan Wangji had been. Harvest time was here and the harvest was good, but they lacked the hands to gather it. He could remember when there had been enough men to bring in the harvest and then some. Now widows did the work of the men who had fallen in battle against their own chief and his family.

Chifeng-zun had inherited his father’s house, lands, and herds at a young age, with his own widowed mother and young brother to look after as well as the three men who worked his fields to command. He was the most important farmer in the settlement, and he ran most things there now that the Wens were gone, seeing that all the widows and their children worked hard and didn’t go hungry. He was both fair and good to them, but he brooded in the evenings over the lost pride and hope of his youth.

Chifeng-zun had earned his title for his prowess in battle, and it was a good match to his temper. There were precious few left in the village who ever called him by his actual name, Nie Mingjue. He had been one of the last of the men called away to fight their mad chief in his youth. Wen Ruohan had been his father’s sworn brother once, and Nie Mingjue had witnessed his father’s death at the man’s hands. He’d stayed away several years longer than most to continue hunting down the remaining Wen clan members that his father’s soul might rest in peace, and when he had finally returned to his childhood village, it was to find everything changed. There were promises he’d exchanged with a soft-eyed boy he’d loved dearly before he left for battle, and when he came back, that boy was a nobleman who lived in their former chief’s manor and wanted nothing to do with Chifeng-zun.

“That promise was made between Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue,” he had said, “and both those people are dead. We are Lianfang-zun and Chifeng-zun now. Forget it; marry a nice woman and have some fat children.”

But Chifeng-zun couldn’t forget it. He couldn’t marry any of the women in his village, even though it was probably his duty to provide a good home for at least one of them. All he could do was feel the hurt and anger swell within him over the years as he realized just how much of what he’d loved was gone.

Now Chifeng-zun looked at the carving in the mute boy’s lap and clenched his fists in anger. “There are tools to mend and the rice to reap!” he roared. “And you waste your time carving clouds for that worthless man who won’t lift a finger for his keep!”

He smacked the board, sending it flying out of the younger man’s grasp. But the carver sat just like the wood himself, not moving a muscle. The farmer relented at the sight.

“The gods have already struck the boy,” muttered Chifeng-zun. It isn’t right that I should.” And he walked away to find his brother.

It was most unfortunate, though, that the next person he should come across was not Nie Huaisang but the carver’s companion. Old Wang lay on the ground at the edge of the settlement, his head propped on a small stone, watching the sunlight fall through the twirling leaves of a peach tree. In his clasped hands, he held his half-empty flask, and he was perfectly at peace with the world.

“Widows are in the fields doing a man’s work,” said Chifeng-zun severely, “and you lie here doing nothing at all.”

“Looks like it,” affirmed the merchant without remorse, raising the flask to his lips.

“No man should eat his rice in idleness,” growled the farmer, standing over him.

“Rice,” the old man grunted in contempt. “You people don’t know what rice is.”

“You mean to lie about in drunken sloth while other folk bring in your food?” snapped Chifeng-zun. “Your simpleminded boy earns your keep.”

“He likes the work,” agreed the reprobate, “but work don’t appeal to me. Each to his own strength, says I.”

The gods didn’t appear to have struck this old man, so Chifeng-zun gladly did it for them. He yanked the merchant to his feet, pounded him well, and dragged him off by the back of his leather tunic, bleeding and cursing.

“You’ll work a harvest for once in your life,” he declared, shoving the man along. “I have the perfect companion for a sodden blasphemer like you.” They came to the edge of the terraced fields. Here the townspeople had erected a chest-high fence, or dyke, of cut turf blocks. “Niu,” announced the farmer, coming through a gap in the earthen dyke, “here’s someone to help with the herding.”

A band of small, shaggy black cows grazed beside the dyke, moving slowly and impassively within their whining cloud of gnats and midges, their short horns sweeping outward and their long hair falling over their eyes. Leaning against the grassy dyke and watching them was an awesome giant of a man, with matted hair falling into his eyes and a cloud of midges all his own. A single aged and stained hemp robe, haphazardly tied, was the only clothing he wore.

Though not a Wen himself, Niu had once been Wen Ruohan’s proudest warrior, the champion of the manor, but he had grown tired of his chief’s mad quest and eventually returned from battle and exile only to find that Jin Guangshan had executed his wife and children. He had roamed the winter hills in despair, trying to extinguish in his colossal body the life that he no longer wanted to live. High fever and sickness had followed, and it seemed his wish would be granted. But the powerful body lived on. It was only the mind that had died.

Niu blundered around like a great bull, and, like a bull, he had to be tamed. Jiang Fengmian had made one of the iron kettle chains into a fetter for him and found the key to the old padlock that had once locked up the Wens’ prisoners. By day, the giant shuffled about on simple tasks, his long legs chained together to keep him from running off into the hills. By night, he slept in Chifeng-zun’s house in an empty cattle stall, his head pillowed on hay and his leg chained to the wall.

Now, Niu stared mildly up at his keeper as Chifeng Zun dropped the bleeding merchant onto the grass beside him. Pulling the big key from around his neck, the farmer unfastened the padlock and locked one fetter around the merchant’s leg instead, chaining the two men together at the ankle.

“There,” he remarked, putting the key around his neck again. “This work isn’t too hard for an old man like you. Just chase the cattle if they start to break into the rice paddies, and bellow if anything goes wrong. Watch Niu if you’re not sure; he’ll soon teach you what to do.” And he went off to his work again, listening with pleasure to the stream of frantic curses that followed him over the dyke.

* * *

While his mother was still alive, Jin Guangyao had celebrated festivals like Zhongyuan and New Year’s with the rest of the town. Lan Wangji had some hazy memories of the man laughing in the lantern light and sharing sweets with him and his brother, but Lan Wangji must have been very young at the time—small enough for his brother to carry him still.

Lan Xichen had once said that by acknowledging his son and then sending him away, Jin Guangshan had enacted the cruelest possible punishment on him: Jin Guangyao could not go back to being Meng Yao and rejoin the community he was born into, nor was he allowed to be properly a part of the Jin clan. It was likely he would spend the rest of his days alone in a crumbling manor amidst a community that resented him for the airs and graces he was required to put on to avoid disgracing the surname that had been thrust upon him. No woman would marry him, and no one but Lan Xichen was willing to call him friend. 

What exactly Jin Guangshan was punishing his son  _ for _ , Lan Wangji didn’t know, but suspected his brother did. It was together that the two of them had gone to Lanling for education all those years ago, and together that they’d returned without explanation, after all.

This year, as with most, Lan Wangji brought Jin Guangyao’s supper to him in the manor and relayed his brother’s annual invitation for the nobleman to join their family’s celebration that evening. As always, Jin Guangyao offered polite thanks for the invitation and hoped that Lan-zongzhu would understand that he must decline. Lan Wangji had never seen him burn any joss paper for either his mother or the Jin ancestors, though there was a red lantern and several burning sticks of incense at the manor entrance every year.

Lan Wangji stepped carefully around the incense now and turned toward the town where the festival fires were already starting to burn in some courtyards. Soon, there would be music until well after the sun went down.

“Lan Zhan!” called a low voice, and Lan Wangji’s steps fumbled slightly. He turned to find the carver standing by the corner of the manor. The other boy was staring at him with those piercing eyes, and Wangji felt his heart skip a beat that was unrelated to his previous surprise.

“You speak,” he observed, blinking back.

The carver looked around cautiously and stepped closer. “Lan Zhan, help me find Wang,” he said in a low whisper. “I’ve looked for him everywhere.”

“My courtesy name is Wangji. Only my parents and brother call me Zhan. And your companion had an altercation with Chifeng-zun and is now chained up with Niu,” Lan Wangji explained.

“Chained up!” the young man exclaimed, eyes blown wide. “He can’t be chained up! When will he be free?”

“In a manner of weeks,” Lan Wangji answered. “After the harvest.”

“But what am I going to do?” the other boy asked, looking stunned. “Can’t we free him somehow?”

“If you attempted to wrest the key from Chifeng-zun, the punishment you would incur would likely be more than your life is worth,” Lan Wangji warned him, eying the boy’s slender form pointedly.

“More than my life’s worth,” the young man muttered. “That’s not much.” He stood for a minute, looking around at the manor, the lake, the far hills of Cloud Recesses. If he sought inspiration, he didn’t seem to find any. He looked at Lan Wangji again, hopeless and frustrated, and the other boy felt a pang that he could offer no other assistance. He was just beginning to piece together the words to ask the carver what it was he needed precisely when the boy simply turned and walked away.

“It is Zhongyuan tonight,” Lan Wangji called after him, because surely the other boy would know that this meant it was an even more dangerous time to wander in the twilight than usual, but he received no answer. Lan Wangji watched the carver walk off into the distance, taking the path along the shore of the lake, and then returned to the town with a certain amount of hollowness settling in his stomach.

* * *

Lan Wangji couldn’t get the carver boy out of his thoughts for the rest of that evening. He thought of his bright eyes as he burned joss paper swords and clothes for his ancestors in the courtyard. He thought of the boy’s calm expression while playing his flute as he and his brother and uncle played traditional songs of the Lan clan beneath the rising full moon. He thought of how lost and lonely the boy’s dark figure had looked walking away as he set lotus lanterns on the surface of the lake with his oldest cousin, Lan Jingyi. Lan Xichen asked him what was bothering him as they returned to their home for the evening, and Lan Wangji simply shook his head.

If the carver boy had been intriguing before, he was even more so now. His speech wasn’t accented like that of his drunken companion. He spoke just like Lan Wangji and his people. Despite never having had romantic notions for himself, Lan Wangji had always enjoyed the fanciful tales that his brother related him from his less religious texts, and he found himself caught up in imagining all sorts of backgrounds for the carver that could easily have outstripped any of his brother’s stories for fantasy. Perhaps the boy had been stolen as a child by the wandering merchants, and that was why he wasn’t like Wang. Perhaps he was a nobleman by birth. He might even be the son of an eminent clan leader in some distant corner of the land.

But if Lan Wangji’s thoughts were pleasant ones, his dreams were dark and grim. He wandered through his town as thunder rumbled in the swollen clouds above, and not one living person did he find. The houses were silent and abandoned, their belongings tossed about. Filth covered the wooden floors, and some of the roofs had fallen in. Everywhere was the smell of decay.

Strewn across the weedy ground between the houses lay an untidy mosaic of bones. They glimmered white and phosphorescent in the dim twilight of the storm. Flesh still clung to some, dried and blackened. So many were underfoot that he couldn’t help stepping on them.

The little temple on the edge of their town was completely destroyed, the wooden walls torn apart. Gravestones were tossed aside and graves dug open, to let something in—or to let it out. Not a single creature moved in the ghastly land of death. The only sound was the sighing of the wind and the ominous growling of thunder.

Lan Wangji stood bewildered in the middle of his town. What could have accomplished this destruction? Human raiders would never have dug up the graves. Animals wouldn’t have left the bones behind. Some evil of the ancient world had descended upon this place, a thing that kept both people and animals away.

Wangji froze, caught by an abrupt foreboding. That thing was still here.

An enemy stalked the vacant houses and corpse-littered ground, hunting him as its prey. He saw nothing, heard nothing beyond the empty rush of wind. But the air grew chill, and then icy. A black shadow fell over him.

Lan Wangji sat bolt upright in his bed, heart pounding wildly. Bright moonlight poured into the room through the open doorway and window, and perfect stillness reigned outside. He heard his father cough through the wall that separated their bedrooms. So far as he could tell, his town was not a welter of bones. But the room was freezing cold, colder than the bitter nights of winter, and Lan Wangji felt a hideous presence. The enemy had not stayed behind in his nightmare.

A low murmuring came to him, a hissing, bubbling, muttering sound from the back wall of the house. Slowly, it passed along the wall beneath his window, and he followed the noise toward the kitchen and storage rooms. It faded out of hearing for a moment, then, and Lan Wangji thought perhaps it had moved off, but then there was a rustling noise, and he realized abruptly that the thing was climbing over the thatched kitchen roof. There was a heavy thud as it landed in the courtyard, and the muttering began again. It was coming closer.

Teeth chattering with the cold, Lan Wangji rose from his bed and reached for the sword above it—the sword he had been instructed never to unsheathe. The clans may have kept their swords as treasured relics of their ancestors, but half of their care of them was to ensure that they never fell into careless hands. It was said that to unsheathe a former cultivator’s sword was to call calamity upon oneself and one’s entire household.

But what else was he to do when the calamity was already here? Shutting the door wouldn’t help. The wood was thin enough that even he could have pushed it over if necessary. Making some noise to wake the rest of his family wouldn’t help, either. The thing was almost here, and what more could they do anyway? There wasn’t a single member of the Lan clan left who could fight against the creatures that sprang from hell beneath the full moon of Zhongyuan.

Lan Wangji tore the silk wrappings off the sword and took its familiar hilt in his right hand. It was strangely warm in that frigid room, and Lan Wangji thought perhaps that some of the chill that had settled in his core might have lifted. Like a rabbit in a trap, he clutched the sword and listened, not yet drawing it, as the bubbling sounds came nearer.

The square of moonlight vanished into ink blackness as a shape moved in front of the door. Lan Wangji prayed for his life and drew Bichen. It felt as though something else, warm and familiar, took hold of his body the moment the sword left its sheathe, and he found himself lunging toward the thing in the doorway, slashing across it. He felt Bichen’s blade bite through something solid, and a sound burst from the thing, a loud whistling shriek. Lan Wangji opened his eyes, which he hadn’t realized he’d closed, and found that the great black shape was gone.

There was a blundering and crashing in the courtyard, and he heard the thing pass back into the street. The warmth of the summer night returned like someone had dumped a bucket of warm water over him.

“What is it?” he heard his father’s voice from the next room, and then his mother’s crying out, “A-Zhan! A-Huan!”

Lan Wangji was opening his mouth to reassure his mother when a weeping, worrying sound rose into the night from somewhere not far off. It keened and whined, gaining strength, until it became a scream, wavering in the air while time stood still and the naked sword in Lan Wangji’s hand seemed to pull at him, begging that he bring it to meet the thing once more. As the sound faded away, so did Bichen’s strange pulling, but a musical hum still seemed to emanate from the sword. Lan Wangji glanced down to see its edge smeared with something dark.

“A-Zhan!”

He looked up to find his mother standing in his doorway, staring at him as if  _ he  _ were the monster, and he quickly slid the sword back into its sheath. That musical hum silenced, but Lan Wangji knew it wasn’t enough to silence the whispers this would bring.

“Something came over the kitchen roof,” he explained quickly. “I drew Bichen to drive it away.”

There was noise in the courtyard now—his uncle’s family rousing. Several of his young cousins’ voices rose in fearful wails and he heard Lan Qiren’s voice calling out for his brother and nephews. Other voices were echoing through the small town now, their neighbors waking to check on one another as well. Lan Wangji stepped forward and his mother took his free hand in both of her own as they entered the courtyard with the rest of their family.

“A-Ma! Wangji!” Lan Xichen was the first to rush toward them. “Are you… Wangji, your sword!”

“He drove the monster away with it,” Jiang Liqin spoke before anyone else could because already Lan Qingheng’s face was clouding with horror while Lan Qiren’s contorted with anger. Lan Jingyi stood beside his father, blinking at his cousin in shock.

But Lan Xichen nodded once, his hand finding his younger brother’s shoulder. “You did well then, Wangji.” And Lan Wangji breathed relief and gratitude. If his brother supported him, then no one else would say a word.

“Xichen!” called Chifeng-zun’s voice from the front gate, “is all well with you?”

“Yes,” answered Lan Xichen, giving his brother’s shoulder a squeeze before letting go. “Fuqin, Shufu, let’s go. Wangji, Jingyi, stay here with your mothers and the little ones in case it comes back.” He straightened his outer robes, which he’d apparently thrown on so quickly he hadn’t even had time to belt them, and strode toward the gate with his father and uncle following after.

Lan Jingyi lingered in the courtyard, shooting curious glances at his cousin for a while, but when it became apparent that Lan Wangji was not intending to pay him any attention, he scurried back into his own house to help his mother with his younger siblings. After a time, Jiang Liqin touched her son’s arm.

“Did it bleed?” she asked, and he nodded. “Then you’ll have to clean the sword. Come on.”

She led him to the kitchen and lit the stove for some light before motioning for him to sit. They didn’t speak to one another as Lan Wangji drew the sword once more. Bichen didn’t hum this time and nothing seemed to call Lan Wangji to bury it in the nearest monster’s heart. It was simply a very good sword in miraculously pristine condition for having sat in its sheath for nearly a century. Jiang Liqin helped him wipe the blood from the blade and rub it down with oil. They were giving the blood-smeared sheath a critical examination when they heard the older men of the family returning, talking loudly.

“Did you find it?” demanded Jiang Liqin, running to the kitchen door. “What was it? Did it get away?”

Lan Wangji moved to his mother’s shoulder to watch them enter the courtyard. His brother and Chifeng-zun were carrying something heavy. Lan Wangji couldn’t see what it was, but Lan Xichen’s face was grave.

“It got away,” said Lan Qingheng. “We don’t know where it went. But it found that young carver on the path near the manor, and we don’t know if he’s going to live.”


	5. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Close updates this time for... reasons. ^^;

They brought the carver into the main bedroom and laid him on the floor. Wangji couldn’t even see the other boy for the crowd of relatives and neighbors around him.

“His clothes are in ribbons.”

“Look at those claw marks! That’s a big animal. It stood up to attack. The wounds start at the shoulder.”

“I can’t believe a claw could do that. They’re neat as knife cuts.”

“He’s burning up with fever.”

“A-Zhan, run and fetch some fresh water—from the stream.” That was his mother’s voice. 

Lan Wangji edged his way to the door and tore across the courtyard to the kitchen. Bichen still lay where he’d left it, clean but unsheathed. It was dangerous to leave the weapon out, but he couldn’t put it back in its sheath until they’d figured out a way to clean the blood out of that. He really should have wiped it before he sheathed it the first time. But that was a problem for later. Lan Wangji snatched up the wooden pail they kept by the door and then nearly ran into Lan Jingyi as he turned to head back out.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” his cousin asked, confusion and fear tingeing his usually lively face.

“My sword is in the kitchen. Don’t let your siblings touch it,” Lan Wangji told him, eyeing his younger cousins who were starting to wander out of their house. Then he ran off to the stream.

When he came back, most of the onlookers who had been crowding his parents’ bedroom were gone, checking on their livestock or hunting the attacker. Lan Wangji stepped into the room to find his mother and brother kneeling by the unconscious young man and sewing him up industriously.

“Find a needle, A-Zhan,” Jiang Liqin suggested, her voice tinged with bitter amusement. “There’s work for everyone. Or… perhaps not,” she added when her older son looked up in concern, knowing too well that his brother was shaken enough by the whole experience without also having to stitch ghastly wounds on a boy so close to his own age.

Lan Wangji set down the pail of water and looked at the object of their handiwork. The carver lay on his back in nothing but his trousers and boots, the rest of his blood-soaked clothes in a wad beside him. Long red wounds raked diagonally across his pale chest, clustered in lines of four. Bright blood still ran from them and dripped down onto the dirt floor. Jiang Liqin kept dabbing the wounds with the tattered tunic so they could see where to stitch.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Lan Xichen assured his brother. “Most of the cuts are shallow. The deepest one is this gash here on the arm. He probably threw a hand up to defend himself and caught the full force of a claw.”

“It’s not the wounds that worry me, it’s the fever,” their mother confessed. “He’s pale as rice cakes from the blood loss, but he’s blazing with heat. And to take a fever so quick after an injury!”

Lan Xichen nodded in agreement. “It’s uncanny all the way around.”

Lan Wangji knelt down by them, his attention caught by a faint line under the slashes—a semicircle of scars making its dim purple track across the other boy’s wounded shoulder.

“He’s been mauled before,” his brother observed. “That’s some kind of bite. It’s a risk of the traveling life, I suppose, but nothing like this attack.”

“He can speak,” said Lan Wangji. For some reason, it felt important to make this known. “Our language, with our accent.”

“So he’s one of our own,” Lan Xichen mused. “Probably Gusu or Yunmeng. I suspected as much from his craft.”

“He’s no coward, either; he faced the intruder fair and square,” Jiang Liqin added. “There isn’t a single claw mark on his back.”

Since his mother was otherwise occupied, it fell to Lan Wangji to go to the kitchen and make breakfast. Lan Jingyi was still there, now working in his expectant mother’s place at his own family’s stove on the other end of the long building. His youngest sister was clutching at the hem of his tunic, staring wide-eyed at the white sword and sheath still sitting in front of the other stove.

“Are you gonna get punished, Tang Er-ge?” the little girl asked, and Lan Jingyi scoffed before his cousin could answer.

“He fought off a monster, Li-mei. Why would he get punished?”

“But when Ba-ba gave you your sword, he said—”

“No one’s getting punished! Go bother A-ma,” Lan Jingyi huffed, waving his sister off with his long cooking chopsticks. “For the record, I’ll stand with you if anyone thinks you did the wrong thing,” he told Lan Wangji when the younger girl was gone.

“Mn.” Lan Wangji acknowledged the sentiment with a polite incline of his head. He wasn’t sure Lan Jingyi really understood what that would mean, but appreciated his cousin’s spirit nonetheless.

“What did it look like?” the other boy asked in a lower voice.

“Dark,” was all Lan Wangji had to tell him.

Lan Jingyi kept up a stream of chatter about the morning’s events that the older boy only half-listened to as he found a towel to wrap the sword in, stowing it on a shelf where curious children wouldn’t be able to reach it before he could figure out what needed to be done with it.

Then, he prepared his family’s breakfast as well as the portion that he then packed in a basket and hurried through the gray morning to bring to Jin Guangyao. All the other men of the township were out, urging on Chifeng-zun’s pair of dogs. They had already been through the manor with torches, but they hadn’t found anything. Jin Guangyao was supremely annoyed at their intrusion, a fact he made known only with the too-strained quality of his smile, but Lan Wangji had known the man long enough to recognize it.

“You’re late,” Jin Guangyao said as he unpacked the meal that Lan Wangji had brought him. “And I can tell your mother didn’t make this soup.”

“The carver is badly injured,” Lan Wangji explained. “My mother and brother are helping tend to him.”

Jin Guangyao made a noise of disinterest and said nothing else as he transferred the food from the wooden and bamboo dishes Lan Wangji had brought it in to his own porcelain ones.

By the time Lan Wangji returned, Lan Xichen and Jiang Liqin were finished. They had brought the  _ luohan _ out of the storeroom and moved it into Lan Wangji’s room, making it into a bed for the carver. The  _ luohan _ was long, like a bench, but it had a wooden back like a chair. The injured young man lay on it with his eyes closed, wrapped in a blanket and not moving at all.

“Fresh bloodstains,” Jiang Liqin said briskly, picking up the boy’s shredded undershirt. “He’ll not wear it again, so we’ve no need to waste the salt in drawing out the stain. Cold water will take out most of it. A-Zhan, take this to the stream and wash it well. We’ll use it for more bandages. He’ll be needing them, I’m afraid.”

Lan Wangji hesitated for a moment, looking between his mother and the boy now sleeping in his bedroom. Jiang Liqin rolled her eyes.

“Where else were we going to put him?” she asked. “I’m sure you’ll get used to it soon enough. Go on now.” She tossed the ruined shirt in his direction, and Lan Wangji hurried to catch the bundle.

When he stepped out the front gate, he found his father, brother, and uncle now standing there with Chifeng-zun and several other men, discussing the events of the morning in low voices.

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen called out to him as he passed. “Come and tell Chifeng-zun what happened.”

Lan Wangji obliged, stepping forward to relate the details of his encounter under Nie Mingjue’s fierce gaze, though he left out his nightmare and the way the sword had sung in his hand when he used it to attack the monster. He wasn’t entirely sure why, just that it seemed these things should be kept to himself until he knew more of what they meant.

“It came around from the back of the house,” Chifeng-zun reflected when he’d finished. “Around which way?”

“Over the kitchen roof,” the boy answered.

“Against the sun,” Nie Huaisang gasped from his older brother’s elbow. “The wrong direction. It’s an evil spirit!”

“That’s why the dogs aren’t picking up a scent,” said Nie Zonghui, one of Chifeng-zun’s farmhands, and a distant cousin. “They keep running around in circles. They can’t find anything at all.”

“But what about the blood?” Lan Xichen pointed out. “Spirits don’t bleed.”

“It must be a restless Water Ghost,” Chifeng-zun concluded. “Like the one from Lotus Pier a century ago.”

“And Lan-xiong drove it away with cultivated steel!” his younger brother concluded excitedly.

“The Water Ghost here among our houses?” Lan Qiren exclaimed. “It’ll drag us all down into the lake!”

* * *

The townspeople couldn’t do much to defend themselves against a Water Ghost, and especially not one that could enter their homes without a care for the spirit gates or talismans they’d already put up. Everyone feared that drawing even one more  _ jian _ from its sheath would call something far worse upon their heads, but they had other weapons left from the war against the Wen clan. They pulled the big, inelegant sabres and spears out of the storerooms and made sure they had an edge, and Lan Xichen, as the only member of the village with official spiritual training, drew up new protective talismans for every household. 

At noon, when the shadow world’s power was weakest, he and Lan Wangji played a song of protection in the middle of the town, though it was uncertain if it would have any effect if played without spiritual power. Some of their neighbors came out to watch them solemnly, and then they all went back to work on the harvest, feeling that they had done what they could. As they worked, they mused over the disquieting event. The only time they knew of a Water Ghost gaining enough of a physical form to walk among human dwellings was the one from the tale of Jiang Meihui, and that one had been fed by the imbalance the Jiang clan’s cultivators had created. What evil could have created this one, they wondered?

Lan Wangji spent the afternoon working in the fields beside Lan Jingyi and Jiang Wanyin. Jiang Wanyin was the son of Jiang Fengmian, and therefore Lan Wangji’s maternal cousin. He’d always been a serious boy, and had only become more so after his beloved older sister moved to Lanling to marry Jin Zixuan the previous year.

It was the Jiang family’s rice paddy that the three boys were working on that day, the two Lan boys helping the smaller family while their older relatives and Lan Jingyi’s siblings cut the stalks in their own paddies. They used handheld sickles to hack through the dry stalks in handfuls, which were then left in the field to be picked up later. Jiang Wanyin and Lan Jingyi seemed to be in competition for which of them could clear the largest portion of the field, and so were rarely in the same part of it long enough to strike up any conversation, for which Lan Wangji was grateful. When they stopped for a water break, though, Jiang Wanyin turned to his older cousin.

“My mother says it’s a shame that the Water Ghost attacked the carver boy,” he remarked. “She says he’s just a harmless half-wit.”

Lan Wangji gave him a sidelong glance, trying to decide if he was being cruel or just making conversation. It was hard to tell sometimes with Jiang Wanyin.

“How do you know he’s a half-wit?” Lan Jingyi demanded.

“He doesn’t even speak,” Jiang Wanyin snorted.

“Does so,” Lan Jingyi insisted, jutting out his chin. “Tang E-rge said so.”

Jiang Wanyin turned incredulous eyes on Lan Wangji. “Since when?”

The other boy swirled his water in its bamboo container for a moment before answering. “He spoke to me last night.”

“Did he now?” Jiang Wanyin’s eyebrows went up even further. “Then why doesn’t he usually?”

Lan Wangji didn’t have an answer for that. He’d been wondering the same since he’d first heard the carver’s cautious voice.

“He might be scared,” Lan Jingyi proposed. “Maybe that old man he’s with beats him if he speaks.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Jiang Wanyin wanted to know, wrinkling his nose.

“If he spoke, he could sell his own wares,” Lan Wangji said, the realization striking him even as the words left his mouth.

“And then the old man would have no money for his drink,” Lan Jingyi concluded triumphantly.

“Would serve him right!” Jiang Wanyin snorted. “You should have seen him this morning with the cattle. Mad Niu was trotting back and forth just like he always does, and the old man was stumbling along after him and cursing until he was hoarse. So, has the carver woken up yet?”

Lan Wangji shook his head. He suspected that someone would have come to tell his brother if he had, and Lan Wangji hadn’t seen him leave the neighboring field all morning.

“I wonder what he was doing out so early,” Lan Jingyi mused. “The merchants were staying in the front room of the manor, but Fuqin said they found him on the path right by the houses.”

“Maybe he saw that your family was in danger,” Jiang Wanyin suggested. “He could have seen the Water Ghost climbing your kitchen roof and run out of the manor to find it.”

“Then did it scream because the carver stabbed it?” Lan Jingyi wondered.

Lan Wangji gave his cousins a sidelong look. “Why would he fight a monster for us?”

“Well, he risked his master’s wrath to speak to you, didn’t he?” Jiang Wanyin pointed out, nudging Lan Wangji in the ribs. “Maybe he didn’t do it for all of you, but just for you, Tang Er-xiong. Everytime I see him, he’s staring at you. He probably feels a kindred spirit because you hardly speak either.”

Lan Wangji gave him a sharp look. It had been two weeks that the merchants had been lingering around their town, and he was quite certain he would have noticed the carver boy paying him any special attention during that time.

“What? It’s only the truth,” Jiang Wanyin scoffed with a defiant jerk of his chin. 

“If Tang-Erge stabbed it, and then the carver stabbed it, then why didn’t anyone find the body?” Lan Jingyi wanted to know.

“It crawled away to die, or something,” Jiang Wanyin insisted. “I’ll bet it crawled back into the lake and sank right to the bottom.”

They went back to work after that, but Lan Wangji had a hard time keeping up with his cousins; his head was too full of thoughts about the carver boy recovering in his bedroom back home and how he might have ended up in the monster’s path last night.

* * *

The next morning was windy and cloudy. Lan Wangji’s family was all out in the field, but his brother had told him to stay at home so that he could keep an eye on the sick carver. The young man tossed and turned in delirium, muttering strange sentences and crying out in pain. Lan Wangji brought some hemp to card and sat by the other boy, putting wet rags on his head at intervals, but the fever was so high that the rags dried out almost at once. When Lan Xichen came home to check on him, he too was at a loss for what else to do. He was sure they were losing the fight.

“Go down to the manor and get Lianfang-zun,” he decided. “He might know something to help the boy.”

Jin Guangyao accompanied Lan Wangji back to the house without question, and his mouth drew into a thin line when he saw the boy stretched out on the  _ luohan _ .

“You might have called me sooner, Xichen,” he said with a note of reproval as he glided over to the carver’s side.

Although he originally had been born one of them and had grown up working harvests and tending crops with the rest of the townspeople, the only thing Jin Guangyao contributed to the settlement now was curing the sick and the injured. The only time Lan Wangji had ever seen him dirty his hands was while tending the small patch of healing herbs he kept in the manor courtyard. It was apparently one of the things he had studied in Lanling, but of all the strange things about Jin Guangyao, this was the strangest. Because, beyond understanding which herbs were needed to cure which illnesses (a thing that any person who knew how to read could learn), he always seemed to know exactly what it was that ailed a person just by feeling their pulse. If he could read so much by feeling the flow of another’s energy, many of the older townsfolk whispered, then he might know how to control it himself, and that would be cultivation.

But as Lan Wangji watched Jin Guangyao taking the carver’s pulse, eyes shut and lips pursed as he concentrated on whatever he felt in that narrow wrist, he found himself thinking mutinously that he didn’t particularly care  _ what _ it was, so long as it worked.

“His fever is very high, but there is no flush to his cheeks,” Jin Guangyao observed after a moment. “There’s a poison locked deep inside his chest, drying up his blood. He needs a strengthening of his water element to counteract the dry fire. I can mix up some herbs for you to brew and pour down his throat. Force him to drink as much water as you can. It will push the poison out through the skin and restore a balance to his body. Once it begins to work and you see him sweating, get him up on the  _ kang _ and light it. Pile blankets on him. Change the bedding frequently and wash it in clear water to dissipate the poisonous exudations.”

“I knew you would know what to do,” Lan Xichen sighed in relief, and Jin Guangyao gave him one of those particular smiles that Lan Wangji only ever saw aimed at his brother.

That night, Lan Wangji slept on the  _ luohan _ while the carver groaned and muttered on the bed. It was unbearably hot with the  _ kang _ going, but it didn’t seem right to leave the other boy to go sleep in the hall or out on the porch. He woke the next morning to his brother and mother slipping into his room to check on the carver, and over breakfast, Lan Xichen was elated.

“Lianfang-zun’s brew is working wonderfully!” he announced. “The boy’s fever is down, and he’s in his own mind.”

“He’s talking, then?” inquired Lan Qingheng, just as Lan Wangji was wondering the same thing, and Lan Xichen’s excitement fell slightly.

“Well, no,” he confessed.

“He’s back to his old tricks,” Jiang Liqin cut in. “But he drank his brew and a big mug of water when we asked him to. We’ll be needing something to call him until he’s willing to tell us his name. What about Wuxian? It was almost your courtesy name, A-Zhan.”

Lan Wangji chewed his food as he rolled the name around in his head.

“Wuxian… ‘without envy,’” Lan Xichen mused. “Well, his carving work is certainly peerless enough.”

And so the carver boy became Wuxian.

Lan Wangji delivered Jin Guangyao’s breakfast and went back to the harvest. He relayed the news of Wuxian’s progress to his cousins when they asked and then listened to them argue for the rest of the morning. At noon, he returned to the house to fetch lunch for everyone and stopped by his bedroom to check on Wuxian.

The young man was still pale and sweaty, buried under blankets, and his long, unbound hair was sticking to his neck and temples, but at least he was conscious. He caught a glimpse of Lan Wangji and looked away. Then he turned back and stared.

“Lan Zhan!” he gasped.

“Wangji,”Lan Wangji reminded him. The old white tom-cat with the torn ear was curled on the young man’s blankets. He groaned a protest when Lan Wangji lifted him off.

“Lan Zhan, what are you doing here?” Wuxian demanded in a whisper, ignoring the correction.

“This is my bedroom,” Lan Wangji told him.

The carver glanced around the empty room, his eyes dull and tired. His face was leaner than before, and there were big black rings under his eyes. He looked like he was suffering, Lan Wangji decided; probably because he was. He glanced back at Lan Wangji and made an effort to move his head in the taller boy’s direction.

“What did I do?” he asked in a low voice. Lan Wangji blinked. “To get here,” Wuxian explained, his voice urgent. “What did I do? You’ll have to tell me because I can’t remember.”

“You saved our village,” said Lan Wangji, and he smiled at the other boy. Wuxian gazed at him, and the suffering look on his face eased. But just for a short space of time. 

“From what?” he muttered. When Lan Wangji gave him a blank look, he gritted his teeth. “Saved you from what?” he insisted doggedly.

Lan Wangji told the other boy about his own narrow escape from the Water Ghost and Wuxian’s leaving the manor to save them. Then he described the various searches they had organized and the town defenses against the creature. During the whole minimalistic rendition, the wood-carver stared up at the various herbs hanging from the ceiling, his face wearing no more expression than Lan Wangji’s.

“So it came here,” Wuxian murmured. “Straight to your house. You were the first person it wanted to kill.”

Lan Wangji watched him in silence for a minute, so full of questions that he couldn’t find the words to ask. “What is your name?” he eventually got out, but the other boy didn’t answer him.

“My family has chosen to call you Wuxian. It means ‘without envy.’ Is it acceptable, or would you prefer we called you by your own name?”

The young man closed his eyes, and Lan Wangji thought for a moment that he wasn’t going to answer.

“No,” Wuxian eventually whispered. “I don’t have a name anymore.” And then he pretended to be asleep until the other boy got up and walked away.

Lan Wangji headed to the kitchen where his mother was in the middle of packing food for him to take back with him to the fields. 

“Hand me one of those baskets there, would you, A-Zhan?” she asked, gesturing toward one of the shelves.

Lan Wangji moved to obey, and noticed Bichen, still sitting on the shelf behind the baskets, the end of its hilt poking out of the cloth he’d wrapped it in the other morning. He thought again of that surge of warmth and the musical tone he’d felt when he wielded it against the Water Ghost. Had it even been a Water Ghost, he wondered suddenly? In the story of Jiang Meihui, her brothers’  _ jian _ had had no effect on the monster. Or did Bichen hold some power that their swords hadn’t?

Curious, Lan Wangji reached out and laid his fingers on the end of the hilt. There was no hum, but the pommel was warm to the touch where it shouldn’t have been in the dark kitchen.

“A-Zhan, the baskets, please,” his mother repeated, and he quickly withdrew his hand to fetch them for her.

As he walked back to the fields, Lan Wangji wondered if he should mention the sword to his brother: both the way that the sword had almost seemed to wield him rather than the other way around when he’d faced the monster, and that it still seemed to be… awake. The Lan family were pillars enough in their community that Lan Wangji didn’t particularly fear for himself if rumors of strange activity related to cultivation got out, but what if it gave strength to the whispers he’d heard all his life about Jin Guangyao? Lan Wangji worried about the strain it might put on his brother if the rest of their community demanded he choose between loyalty to them or his friend.

Or, Jin Guangyao’s tenuous connection to the Jin Clan might still be enough to protect him from such accusations, at which point it was possible that Wuxian and his companion, as strangers in this area, would fall under suspicion.

Perhaps it was best if Lan Wangji continued to keep such things to himself for now.

* * *

That night, Lan Wangji dreamed that the young carver was walking through his town, playing that flute of his. The boy’s face was very white, but the shadow at his feet was sooty black, as black as a hole in the ground. He stopped, but the shadow didn’t want to stand still with him. It flickered like a dark flame, as if it longed to tear itself free, and all the green grass that fell under it turned dry and brittle. Lan Wangji stepped closer, leaning down to look at it, and the black form on the ground gave a long, shuddering hiss.

Lan Wangji woke and sat up in the darkness with the hiss still in his ears, remembering the enemy standing at his door. But this time it wasn’t a hiss he heard. The sick carver was talking in his sleep. Lan Wangji dozed off again, listening to the soft whispers repeating over and over, like a song without a tune.


End file.
